


oh brother, i can't get through

by kingandqueeninthenorth



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-12
Updated: 2013-06-12
Packaged: 2017-12-14 19:16:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/840416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kingandqueeninthenorth/pseuds/kingandqueeninthenorth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the time comes for the Lannisters to atone for their sins, Sansa barely feels a thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	oh brother, i can't get through

He’s drunk on death and light headed from battle, his heart hammering and his breathing shallow. He sees nothing but red and his hands ache from the weight of his sword. Adrenaline and primal instinct push him forward, lending strength and skill to the hand that wields his sword.

Once he’s in the Red Keep, Robb can only think of Sansa.

She’s in the back of his mind at most every moment. He tries to force the memory of her away when he fights, but it does no use. He pictures auburn hair as he strikes a man down, imagines Tully blue eyes as he plunges his sword through the man’s belly.

He hardly has to think about fighting. Killing is a reflex and death is a familiar companion. He’s more wolf than man these days.  

—-

She holds her dagger so tightly in hand that her knuckles turn white. She watches the door shake and shudder as someone forces their way in.

Sansa steels herself as a man comes staggering into the room in a blast of splinters and steel. Fear blinds her only momentarily.

_I’m a wolf. I will bite._

But the armor is so, so familiar. Grey and white and the sigil of a direwolf. The man looks up at her, auburn curls heavy with sweat falling into blue eyes.

_Robb._

The dagger falls to the floor with a metallic clattering sound and she throws herself at him. He smells of sweat and blood, and he’s sticky and rough in his armor. She tangles her fingers in his hair and she makes a noise that’s half a sob and half a laugh.

“You’re alive,” he breathes in relief.

She wants to scream and cry and laugh and howl all at once. Words tumble out of her mouth before she even feels them on her tongue. “You have to kill him.”

—-

He owes everything to the Tyrells. Without Highgarden and its army, his cause would be lost.

Robb has only ever wanted Northern independence, so he leaves the Iron Throne to the Tyrells.

And they leave Joffrey, the queen, and the North to Robb.

—-

When the time comes for the Lannisters to atone for their sins, Sansa barely feels a thing.

She stands atop the steps of the Great Sept of Baelor, the wind whistling through her as though she were full of holes. She forces herself to stand straight.  _I will be brave,_ she tells herself. It won’t be the first time she’s seen someone beheaded. The memory makes her stomach churn.

The queen goes willingly, gracefully. She doesn’t speak or struggle. Sansa watches as she kneels before the crowd that screams for her blood. Cersei doesn’t seem to hear them. Her face is an impassive mask as she stares at the throng of people she once called her subjects.

 _Didn’t you see this coming?_ Sansa wonders.  _You built your kingdom on lies and they have dissolved beneath you. And now you will taste the vengeance so dearly owed to you._

Cersei bows her head, her thick blonde curls spilling over her shoulders and revealing the pale skin at the back of her neck.

_I will watch. I won’t flinch. I am a wolf. A wolf who doesn’t have to pretend to be a bird any longer._

Robb swings Ice down, beheading the queen in one swift stroke. Her body convulses violently and it’s a horrific sight, but Sansa doesn’t blink. Cersei’s head hits the step with a sickening, heavy noise.

Sansa sees nothing but red.

When they bring the king forward, he is anything but silent. He screams and shouts, thrashing and fighting against the men who force him to stoop in his mother’s blood. His head whips around and he calls for Robb again and again. When he sees him, he shouts some sort of insult, but Sansa hardly hear him over the ringing in her ears.

Robb stands stoically and regards Joffrey with little interest. The king turns his head to Sansa, a wild look in his green eyes. She stares back at him, unflinching. Joff has been beaten bloody, suffering every beating that Sansa received twice over.

When she showed Robb her bruises, he cursed and stalked off, calling for his men. From then on, Sansa could hear Joffrey screaming from the cell they were keeping him in until it was time for his execution.

They force Joffrey’s head down, and Robb brings Ice up. Her brother looks to her and she nods.

His body jerks as the sword cuts through Joff easily, sending his head rolling through a pool of blood. Robb grabs the severed head by the king’s blonde hair, and holds it up to her. The crowd’s roar is deafening.

Joffrey’s green eyes are wide open, staring at her mutely. A smile ghosts over Sansa’s lips.

When they took her father’s head, she fainted. The blood had been too much. She could still see her Ned Stark’s head dropping to these very steps as the life drained out of him.

But now the steps are Lannister red, and she doesn’t feel a thing.

When she came to King’s Landing, she was a soft thing who dreamt of songs, but knew nothing of what it meant to live one, to sing one.

They called her a bird and locked her in a gilded cage.

_I’m a wolf. A wolf with a taste for blood._

_—-_

He dips the head in tar and mounts it on a spike himself. The sight is appalling, but Sansa watches all of it.

He puts it up on the battlements and she gives him an approving nod. He watches as his sister studies the dead expressions, her gaze cold and hard.

“They can’t hurt you any longer,” he says quietly.

“We won,” she says calmly, never taking her eyes off Joffrey’s head. “I thought I would feel more satisfied.”

It’s a hollow feeling she speaks of, and Robb knows it all too well.

—-

Sansa goes to see his head every night after Robb wakes her from her nightmares.

She dreams of execution. Sometimes it’s Joffrey, other times it’s the queen, and all too often, it’s her father.

Robb always goes with her. She leads the way and he follows closely behind. She walks from her bedchamber to the gatehouse, and then up the steps to the ramparts. It’s a path she walks half a hundred times, so often that she could walk it in her sleep. Sometimes she does.

Joffrey’s head rots despite the tar, and it’s hardly recognizable in the dark when they visit.

It gives her comfort to see it upon a spike, grotesque and rotting. It’s a gruesome reminder that she was not the bird they thought she was, and her brother wasn’t the fool they assumed him to be.

—-

One night as they stand before the head, she cries.

She collapses into him suddenly. Robb holds his sister, feeling her body shake with every sob. What she cries for, he couldn’t say. There are so many things they have to mourn.

She could be crying for the family they lost, for the innocence and childhood that were both snatched from her, or for the bruises that haven’t yet completely faded.

He doesn’t know why, but when she lifts her tear streaked face, he kisses her. It isn’t brotherly and it’s far from chaste, but Sansa pushes against him with such force that he thinks they might melt into one another.

It’s a good feeling, and it pushes the hollow ache away.

—-

The head has almost entirely rotted away. It falls apart and the birds make away with most of the skin.

Robb takes her to see it one last time, and for that she is thankful.

Joffrey is gone, and there is nothing left for them here. Robb never wanted the Iron Throne and she has grown tired of ash and dust and the sweltering sun.

“Are we going home?” she asks hopefully. Hope is a dangerous thing, and she dares not fall too deeply into it.

Robb nods. “We’ll leave for Winterfell tomorrow.”

 _Home._ A thousand memories swirl through her. She thinks of snowflakes and snowballs, of ice and Winterfell’s grey walls. She thinks of her Father’s heart tree with its red leaves and white bark. She can feel the furs of her bedroom, the heat of the castle, a chilly breeze on her skin.

Other thoughts creep into the corner of her mind. She can feel kisses in the godswood and naked swims in the hot springs. She imagines the drag of her skirts on her thighs as she lifts them and pulls Robb forward.

_We are wolves. Finally, I am free of my cage and running, running home._


End file.
